>> Monday, 29 December 2008

Detail of a vine Cordon Royat training before final pruning with old twigs and branches still on the vine, also showing how it looks when you du "surgreffage" (surgreffe, surgreffé), topworking/top grafting/field grafting in English, you top graft a new grape variety on an existing vine (or fruit tree) to change the variety of the fruit, you can see where the graft has been done: at the joint or "knot" on the trunk of the vine. Surgreffage is expensive and rarely used. Domaine de Triennes Nans-les-Pins Var Cote d’Azur France.

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>> Tuesday, 23 December 2008

Vignerons often seem to be very fond of word play. In some cases it is by necessity, to circumvent restrictive appellation rule. In others it's just plain fun. One example: A red sweet fortified wine (Port wine style) called Vin D'Ou (Wine from where?), a play of word on Vin Doux (Sweet Wine). Domaine de la Tour du Bon Le Castellet Bandol Var Cote d’Azur France

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>> Thursday, 11 December 2008

If you're a photographer, no doubt you do. If not, it's perhaps not very likely.

It's the sine qua non for a photo that will be used for anything more than personal use, e.g. sold to someone.

To put it simply (and not necessarily scientifically correctly), it refers to information about a picture. Often this info can be embedded in the file itself. It is things like description text, keyword, copyright information and much more. Tedious things to manage but vital for the picture.

David Riecks is well known to the metadata freaks as the "father" of ControlledVocabulary.com and the publisher of a, yes, controlled vocabulary that many photographers use to help with keywording images.

>> Wednesday, 10 December 2008

View over the cliff village Les Baux from the vineyards of Mas Sainte Berthe in Provence. (Les Baux has given its name to the mineral bauxite which is the major source for aluminum - but no longer cming from Provence.)

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>> Wednesday, 26 November 2008

Winter pruning in rainy weather. Pruning is the main activity in the vineyard in the winter. You have to do it and it has to be done, at least partially manually. You can cut the vines with "hand powered" secateurs or with power secateurs, pneumatic as in the picture or electric.

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>> Tuesday, 25 November 2008

An unusual sight. If you look only casually you might think that this is a field of asparagus. But no, this is newly grafted vines, planted to gain some vigour for next year's new plantations. The Loire Valley, France.

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>> Thursday, 20 November 2008

Another picture, a closeup, of an old vine of chenin blanc in spring.

(BTW this photo and two others of mine were illegally used, without permission, without payment and without photo credit, by a wine magazine in Chile - VitViniCCultura (now defunct?). I repeatedly tried to contact them to get things sorted but they never responded. Chile being so far away, it was difficult for me to take any legal action.)

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>> Monday, 17 November 2008

This is a rainwater collector. The intention is to check what residues there are (from spraying for example). Unfortunately, since installation they have not had a drop of rain...The Ackerman cellars are in an impressive old quarry. Today production has mode to modern facilities but you can still visit the old cellars.

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>> Thursday, 2 October 2008

The black basalt lava stone cathedral. The La Galeote hotel. L'Herault river. Agde town. Languedoc. France. Europe. St Etienne cathedral from the 12 century. The same black lava can be found in some of the Languedoc vineyards.

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BKWine Photography

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